1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a biological information acquiring apparatus, a biological information acquiring method and a biometric authentication apparatus.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2009-060043, filed Mar. 12, 2009, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Related Art
A biometric authentication has been performed that uses biological information such as a fingerprint, an iris, or a vein pattern of a user to identify the user as a qualified user. Various kinds of biological information acquiring apparatuses are used to perform such biometric authentication.
Some of these biological information acquiring apparatuses include a light source unit that emits a light and a light receiving element that receives the light. The biological information is obtained by irradiating the light from the light source unit to a living body, receiving the light from the body, and converting the light that is received to an electrical signal.
Devices such as a mobile terminal and a personal computer that have an authentication function are used today. A biological information acquiring apparatus that is large in scale and requires high power consumption is undesirable.
The authentication is required to have higher accuracy than before, as public awareness of security has been increased. Therefore, it is required to increase the accuracy of the biological information that is obtained. Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2007-330769 discloses a biometric authentication apparatus that obtains biological information with high accuracy and can be miniaturized easily.
The biometric authentication apparatus of Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2007-330769 includes a light source unit that is disposed around a light receiving unit of the biometric authentication apparatus. The light source unit is in a circular form, and a unit that concentrates the received light is necessary. Accordingly, it is difficult to miniaturize the biometric authentication apparatus.